bloggg

New web hosting

gommai — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:25:21 +0000

I purchased some web hosting the other week. It was a pretty amazing deal, so I had to jump on it. I’ll probably stop updating this blog eventually; most likely this will be sometime after I think of a good domain name.

Posted in Random

Trip to Arizona

gommai — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:37:53 +0000

I went to Arizona over the weekend. Unfortunately, I had only a solid fifteen or twenty minutes set aside solely for taking photographs. At least I got a few good photos out of it.

One of these days, I’ll get my flickr account reinstated. Until then, any photos I post will be on this site.

Changing Seasons

gommai — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:37:39 +0000

While driving to a friend’s place this evening, I observed the dark clouds to the west and northwest. A storm was obviously on its way, so I made sure my windows were down so I could feel the cool, relieving breeze. At a stop light, several leaves floated off the surrounding trees, a few of which landed in my car. After months of heat and humidity, I was amazed to see these familiar signs of fall.

It seems I should be used to the changing of seasons by now. After all, I have been here a while. Regardless, when the seasons begin to shift from one to another, I can’t help but feel the same the same as I did when I was eight years old — so full of awe and wonder. Today is not the same as yesterday.

Seasons change. It’s such a familiar concept that it has become cliche. That’s unfortunate; the moment in between is beautiful.

Moving from Mail to Entourage

gommai — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 19:30:11 +0000

I began working on some small projects for school a couple weeks ago, and consequently spent a lot of time in Microsoft Word. I haven’t really explored the application to a great extent, so I became a little curious about a particular option: the project tab.

The project tab allows the user to incorporate the document with an ongoing project in Microsoft’s Entourage mail and organization software. I’ve played with Entourage before, but never used it as my mail application because of its proprietary mailbox format. What if I want to switch to another application?

Perhaps against better judgment, I started testing Entourage as my default mail client. I’ve been using it for a few days now, and have a few notes about it.

All-in-one
One of the most convenient parts of Entourage, when compared to Apple’s Mail application, is the integration of all the PIM utilities. Data is shared seamlessly throughout the program, as well as throughout Office. The downside to this is the data is not shared with Apple’s PIM software, and cannot be easily synchronized. Consequently, many applications which rely on iCal and Address Book — such as iChat and Adium — are left empty.

Memory usage
Entourage takes up more memory — both real and virtual — than Mail. On my system, Entourage takes about 35MB and 180MB of real and virtual memory (respectively), while Mail consumes about 18MB and 130MB. That number can fluctuate, I’m sure, depending on the size of the database. However, to get the full functionality of Entourage, you must also use iCal, Stickies, and Address Book. Apple’s PIM suite uses slightly more real memory, and around twice as much virtual memory to have the same functionality.

The transition
Entourage has tools for helping new users move from another mail client. Unfortunately, it seems Entourage can only import information from Mail on my version of OS X (Panther), so the user is forced to come up with another way to import Address Book and iCal information. That led me to a couple of scripts from Paul Berkowitz. He wrote a few scripts to help transition from Mail, iCal and Address Book to Entourage, and vice versa. The transition isn’t perfect, as there are differences in standards for both programs. However, the scripts were sufficient for my purposes.

So now what?
Entourage is definitely a little harder to use, and it will take time to adjust. Mail was just getting a little slow for my tastes, and I was intrigued by the Office integration. I’ll try sticking with Entourage for a while, but I’m going to keep those scripts handy.